


Level Up

by meguri_aite



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: M/M, i am sorry for you touya, shindou is high on his own metaphors, touya is low on patience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1572254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I swear, if today Shindou comes in his threadbare excuse of a t-shirt again, I just might dump this goke on his head.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Level Up

I swear, if today Shindou comes in his threadbare excuse of a t-shirt again, I just might dump this goke on his head.

That is, if he deigns to show up on time. If he’s late, I’ll dump it onto his head no matter what. I’m really short on patience today.

Sometimes I wonder if he’s doing these things on purpose. Wearing clothes that could have been chosen solely on the principle of not resembling anything remotely like a suit, treating punctuality as if it was extravagance he couldn’t care less about one minute and then showing up hours early for his official matches the next. Playing first hand tengens in decisive games. Disappearing on every Golden Week like a man haunted. Saying incomprehensible things out of the blue. As if I needed more reasons to spend my days thinking about him, trying to puzzle out his every mystery and put up with every idiosyncrasy.

And don’t get me even started on how many of those he has: trust Shindou to keep coming up with new ones as soon as I think I have figured something out. I would have a decent chance at it if the puzzles were all Go-related, but no, Shindou has to be incomprehensible in every regard, and I have to have it figured out.

Take his horrible t-shirts, for example. He has a number of those, half of them emblazoned with tasteless variations of the same joke. I get it, it’s a play on words, and it’s about Go. Don’t people find the funniness of the same joke inversely proportional to time number of times it’s told, though? If that alone wasn’t enough, the t-shirts are all so garish that they compel me to stare at them every damn time, and the longer I keep looking at them, the more details start attracting my attention. At one point I realized there was a pattern to these t-shirts. One of them he wears on special occasions. Three of these t-shirts he wears interchangeably in winter, and five of them in summer. Those summer ones are made of thinner fabrics, and he has probably worn his favourite summer t-shirt for so long now that it’s been stretched and worn out and now hangs on his frame like a pajama top, complete with a too-loose neckline and washed-out colors. 

I hate that t-shirt. I hate that for some bizarre reason, I am sitting here thinking about it even if Shindou himself isn’t here yet.

With a quiet chiming of the bell, the door to the salon opens, and Shindou comes in. It’s five minutes to four, the damn t-shirt is right on his person, and Shindou is uncharacteristically silent.

He sits down before me with a nod, and we start with our usual warm-up hayago. I wonder if I can ask what the matter with him is, or if it’s something we don’t do.

About ten minutes in, Shindou speaks up without taking his eyes off the board.

“Touya.”

“Yes?”

“Do you have a favourite color?”

What in the – okay, there is no point in asking this, there is never point in asking for anything remotely resembling reasoning from Shindou. I would know best.

He still refuses to look up from the board, though. Strange.

“Green. Dark green, like pines,” I specify out of some perverse desire to be as pedantic as possible. Maybe the big fat number five glaring in black against the yellow of his shirt compels me; gods know it’s not the worst thing it could drive a man to.

Meanwhile, Shindou keeps boring holes into the goban.

“Is there any reason to that?” Damn, I knew I was low on patience today. In my defense, I didn’t expect to be confronted with yet another conundrum from Shindou as well as his unfortunate clothing preferences.

“No.” He frowns. “Yes.”

Patience is a virtue, but at times it feels like an unattainable one. I contemplate the benefits of getting back into the game and pressing for answers, but then Shindou huffs and tugs at his neckline in irritation. Seeing how the neckline was already loose before he started tearing at it, my eyes are drawn to the edge of the yellow fabric, wondering how far Shindou can stretch it.

“I don’t know. Waya said-” he scowls. “Nevermind.”

This conversation isn’t going in a direction I could make any sense of, so pressing the point is really the only option I have.

“Waya said?” I prompt, catching myself before my fingers could start tapping at the sides of the goke. I wonder if Shindou is aware that when he pulls at the front of his t-shirt like that, it exposes his collarbones and clings to the bony lines of his shoulder?

 “Waya said that- Does it really matter?” he says plaintively, still refusing to look at me. “It’s stupid.” But I can see that Shindou is in one of his fidgety moods, and I know he will continue speaking once he starts off like that. I am not wrong, because with one more annoyed tug at his neckline, he straightens up with determination and continues.

“It’s really stupid. I was talking to Waya today, as I said, and mentioned that I’ll have to ask you to sub in for me again, because my mom is being all fussy with attending a family event, so Waya said something, like, how weird we are.”

“Weird?” I have noticed that Waya Yoshitaka was a somewhat opinionated person, but it never occurred to me that any of his opinions would relate, well, to me.

“Yeah, he said that for self-proclaimed rivals we’re sure acting like – like best friends, helping each other, you know, the whole deal, when in reality I probably didn’t even know most basic things about you. That’s what he said.”

Despite the determination in his voice, Shindou is looking discomforted by this conversation. Is that because the idea of being taken for my friend doesn’t sit at all right with him? I don’t know why, but this thought makes me itchy to dump the contents of my goke at his head again, and possibly to slam my head against the wall. That is not very rational of me.

“I see.”

“I told you it was stupid.”

“Mmm.” I aim for a non-committal reply, staring at the contents of my goke and trying to figure out how all of my earlier anger turned into dejection. Even the glaringly bright t-shirt looks more pathetic now than irritating.

“Yeah, so I told Waya he doesn’t understand how eternal rivalry works.” Shindou continues forcefully. “So it’s like, you know, already tons of level-ups ahead from what he’s talking about.”

“Levels?”

“Yeah, double digit levels, you know.”

Judging by the intense expression on Shindou’s face, he expects me to get his obscure reference. Since I have no clue what kind of scale he is referring to in the first place, it obviously isn’t working.

“How exactly is eternal rivalry translated into double digits?” I say, choosing my words carefully. I never know what new grounds I’ll be threading next because of Shindou, but it’s not like I have to rush in blindly. The question must have made some sense, at least, because Shindou tugs at his harassed t-shirt again and starts making agitated gestures.

“You know, if - if getting to know each other is where people usually start off, it would be like the first level, so other stuff – you know, like friendship and erm, stuff –  people get there as they gain more experience. Level two and upwards.” He looks at me with a pained look that seems to expect me to nod in understanding. “We – you and me, this eternal rivalry thing – it’s already at double-digit levels, with all these crazy stats and-”

“Wait,” I stop him with an outstretched hand. “Are you talking in _video games_ terms?”

“What else could it be?” The genuine look of puzzlement on his face makes me want to shake my head. If there any other Go professional on Earth – I do not presume to know many people outside their circle to generalize broadly – who would want to speculate about relationships in gaming terms, I’ve yet to meet them. But then again, maybe that’s what they do in their insei circle, in which case it means I’m out of the loop.

“Let me get that right. You are using gaming terminology to say that we’re not friends? Or that we are?” The question comes out more urgent than impatient, but that will have to do. I feel the need to hear his answer, even if it takes maneuvering around his outlandish metaphors to do it.

“Tooooouya,” Shindou rolls his eyes and crosses his arms, slumping back. I am spared the sight of that obnoxious number five, but the shoulder lines under the fabrics of the t-shirt are defined even more sharply now. “It’s really not hard at all. Rivals are already past the stage of friends. It’s this bigger thing, you know? We kinda jumped on that level, years ago.” He sits up straight in his chair and starts making vague circular movements with his hands. “So Waya really doesn’t see it, but he was right about one part.”

Shindou frowns, obviously looking for words. I tense involuntarily, the sense of relief that washed over me just seconds ago ready dissipate.

“This basic stuff – what normal people do at level one, you know – it kind of got left behind. I have been doing my damnedest to catch up to you, walking three steps at a time, so it’s no wonder some things happen out of order.” He smiles a sheepish smile that feels like a spring come early, and I have to blink a few times to regain my composure.

“So you decided to start by asking me about my color preferences.”

“Yeah, gotta start somewhere. With your fashion sense, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something girly,” he says with an obvious sense of superiority.

Does he think he can get away with criticizing my fashion choices while wearing something that was begging to be ripped off him and given a merciful death on a pyre?

“For your information, you are lagging behind again. I already know your favourite color. It’s yellow,” I inform him, taking extreme pleasure in seeing Shindou go slack-jawed with surprise.

Seriously, only Shindou can think that out of all things, this could be a secret to anyone.

Least of all me.

**Author's Note:**

> happy hikago day to the best of fandoms ♥
> 
> (and i was just feeling festive okay so not much braining was done this day)


End file.
